Alabama's Morning News with JT
Jonathan Savage tells us about the upcoming NATO Summit
5280 Exterior's James Hardy sighting is a low-maintenance sighting made primarily of cement that resists flame spread and repels wood-borne insects and woodpeckers. Through the month of July, you'll receive free, rigid foam installation with the purchase of whole-house sighting. That's installing additional insulation behind your sighting, or free, but only for the month of July. Call today for more details or visit 5280exterior's.com. 5280exterior's.com, a James Hardy preferred contractor, 5280 Exterior's, the altitude of quality. Jonathan Savage in London, Jonathan, what is the latest? Yeah, well, where do we start? Well, a busy few days has been in the world of politics. Let's start in France, then. That's the most recent, and arguably the most surprising thing to happen this week. There was a parliamentary election. It wasn't scheduled to happen, but President Emmanuel Macron saw the right-wing national rally do well in European elections, and he said, "Look, I can't pretend as if nothing is happening. We've got an election here, and France can make up its mind about who it really wants in charge." The far-right national rally, his centrist, or perhaps a party to the left, looked like the national rally. We're going to win. They were expected to win. They were in front of the opinion polls, but when the exit poll came in, when the votes were counted up, the national rally only finished third, thanks in no small part to Macron's centrist and the left-wing alliance working together to limit the number of seats the national rally could win. It leaves France in a very uncertain position. It certainly hasn't answered the question once and for all, because you have three parties or three blocks, none of which has enough votes to govern France. There's going to be some horse trading, some coalition building, and much uncertainty in the weeks ahead. What about what happened in Iran? They had some changes over there as well? Yeah, significant changes, if you think back a few months ago, Iran was arguably a very belligerent force in the Middle East. They were firing rockets at Israel. They were confrontational with the United States. They were enriching uranium, according to inspectors, and they had a hard-line leader in Ebrahim Raisi. He was killed in a helicopter crash, and the election to replace him has put a reformist candidate, a heart surgeon Masud Pizeshkian in the position of President of Iran. He's promised to reach out to the West to try and get sanctions eased, and also to ease the enforcement of the country's mandatory headscarf law. We've seen years of protests against that, deaths, arrests, repression, and President Pizeshkian says he'll do things differently. But the problem for him is he's not the supreme leader of Iran. The president is really only number two. Behind the supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and now you have these multiple forces in Iran will Pizeshkian get to carry through his reformist agenda, or will he be stifled by the hard-lineist on the Ayatollah? Jonathan, I always find it interesting. If you've seen pictures of people living in Iran back in the early '60s, they look like pictures of people living in the West in that time period, like women, are dressed in jeans and t-shirts back in the early '60s, and how much that changed just over a few decades to where now they're in the full burkas and everything else, because there's a law that says they have to completely cover themselves, and it's so strange how these laws change and how quickly this is put upon the people. It really shows how it's really not one world. What revolutions do, to be fair, in 1979, Iran had an Islamic revolution. The Shah, the monarch of Iran, was ousted, and he was replaced by a Theocracy, which was very strict in its interpretation of Islam, and that's why the country is run by a cleric in the form of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They do have elections, they do have a president, but all comes down to the Ayatollah endorsing and saying, "Okay, you're fit to run." The United States says that Iran's election was not free or fair, they've noted that a significant number of Iranians chose not to participate. 600,000 people spoiled their ballots, so people look at Iran and say, "Yes, this is the future that emerged after the 1979 revolution." Jonathan Savage, live in London, thank you so much for joining us. 5280 exteriors James Hardy citing is a low-maintenance citing made primarily of cement that resist flame spread and repels woodborne insects and woodpeckers. Through the month of July, you'll receive free, rigid foam installation with the purchase of whole-house siding. That's installing additional insulation behind your siding, or free, but only for the month of July. Call today for more details or visit 5280 exteriors.com 5280 exteriors.com, a James Hardy preferred contractor, 5280 exteriors, the altitude of quality. [BLANK_AUDIO]